Standard Oil.When Payne returned
to Cleveland in 1865, he established a company with the Clark brothers,
Clark, Payne & Company and entered the oil refinery business.
He had plenty of company. By 1872 there were 36 refiners in
Cleveland, with John D Rockefeller owning the largest and Payne the
next largest. Payne lost money in 1871, so when Rockefeller
suggested they join forces, he listened. Rockefeller offered
$400,000 for Payne's business, which Payne took as stock in Standard
Oil of Ohio. He immediately became the third largest stockholder,
after Rockefeller and Henry Morrison Flagler. The latter was
nine years older than either Rockefeller or Payne, and his entry money
was put up by a relative by marriage, Stephen Harkness.
Later, in 1874, Charles Pratt of New York joined the group.
The four major partners: Rockefeller, Flagler/Harkness, Payne/Whitney
and Pratt dominated the company, although there were about seven other
members of the inner circle.

For someone wishing
to see the detailed history of Standard Oil, I recommend "Titan"
by Ron Chrernow. Standard
of Ohio was prohibited from owning assets outside of Ohio, so the
group circumvented this ban by establishing a trust composed of several
lesser employees. The companies added to Standard Oil were purchased
by the individuals of the inner group; in many cases the original
owners were left substantial shares in the companies, but the major
decisions came from Rockefeller and his inner circle. From 1872
to 1884 they worked out of the same office space, and had breakfast
or lunch daily. The entrepreneurial Flagler often did the seamy
work, with Payne quietly on working the political arena, although
at times he participated in discussions with the railroads, which
were an important cog in the Standard Oil schema.

Standard had grown
so large by 1884 that it was doing business more in New York than
in Cleveland. So the three Clevelanders moved to New York City.
About that time, Oliver Payne resigned from his treasurer's job, and
gradually began divesting his immense holdings in the combine.
Until his death he remained a principal stockholder, and was named
when the government instituted its anti-trust actions around 1910.
The ironic result of the breakup was a doubling or tripling of the
value of Standard Oil stock, so the breakup benefited most those who
had organized the trust! It is estimated that by 1910,
Payne received $5 million annual dividends from Standard Oil.

After 1884, the
partners looked for ways to invest their wealth. Rockefeller
had always distrusted banks, and insisted on keeping a substantial
cash reserve in the company. In effect, Standard financed itself.
In the last half of the 19th century, railroads were considered a
reliable investment (just as stock in the 'telephone company' was
considered the safest investment in the 1940s).
Henry Flagler decided to run a railroad from Georgia down the length
of Florida, which at that time was considered a swamp and wilderness.
When he reached St. Augustine, he gave Carrère
and Hastings their big break to design two hotels and three churches.

Railroads.
One of the Standard Oil inner circle was Johnson Newlon Camden, who
was Senator from West Virginia from 1881 to 1887. He kept his
association with Standard Oil secret, and this obvious conflict of
interest was never exposed. He probably was awarded his Senate
seat in much the same manner as Harry B. Payne, except the money came
from other sources in Standard Oil. He wangled a rebate structure
out of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad positioning himself as a competitor
of Standard Oil. He extended his refinery interests from West
Virginia to Baltimore, where he controlled the largest oil depot and
shipping center in Maryland.

Camden also pioneered
in development of central and northern West Virginia's railroads and
coal fields. He played a leading role in such enterprises as
the Ohio River Railroad which started in Wheeling in 1882 and reached
a terminus in Huntington in 1888; the West Virginia and Pittsburgh
Railroad, which sought to link the Baltimore and Ohio and the Chesapeake
railroads; and the Monongahela Railroad which developed the Upper
Monongahela Valley in the 1880s. A good part of the financing
of these enterprises came from Oliver Payne. Baseball
fans among us will recognize the name Camden Yards as we watch the
Baltimore Orioles in their new stadium.

American Tobacco
Company. James Buchanan Duke (1856 - 1925) was
a young man at the conclusion of the Civil War. His father had
operated a tobacco farm, and through some fluke of fate, the Union
troops had missed a storage barn while all others in the area were
burned. James, his brother Benjamin, and his father Washington
Duke, sold their tobacco door to door. James decided to
enter into packaged cigarettes, and a friend of his invented a cigarette
rolling machine. At the time, pre-rolled cigarettes were looked
upon suspiciously by most citizens, who were habituated to 'rolling
their own'. Within a few years, the tobacco industry had
shaken out to five or six major manufacturers. In 1884 James
B Duke moved to New York and opened a cigarette factory, intending
to develop the tobacco market in the North. Shortly thereafter,
he met Oliver Payne, who suggested that instead of fighting his North
Carolina competitors, he buy them out. Using New York city financiers,
especially Oliver Payne and William Collins Whitney, he did this,
and American Tobacoo Company was the result. Some time after,
Duke made an arrangement with British Tobacco, agreeing not to invade
the Europe market if British Tobacco agreed not to invade the USA
market. Eventually this was declared illegal, and American Tobacco
was broken up in 1911. As with Standard Oil, the breakup profited
the original stockholders who saw the value of their holdings double
when the stock went public.

United States
Steel. Oliver Payne was a major stockholder in Tennessee
Coal and Iron Company. During the 1907 panic, several banks
were shaken and Moore & Schley, a speculative brokerage house
was $25 million in debt. This was Payne's major stockbroker.
Moore & Schley had used a gigantic majority stake in Tennessee
Iron and Coal as collateral against loans. It looked as if the
brokerage would have to place the bloc of stock on the market,
which would have collapsed the market and ruined Moore & Schley,
severely damaging Payne's finances. At Payne's either acquiescence
or urging, J Pierpont Morgan hatched a scheme that would save Moore
& Schley by eliminating its need to sell the Tennessee stock on
the market; instead it would be sold to United States Steel.
Meanwhile other trusts partners were expected to prop up the other
weak banks. The scheme succeeded with a wink and a nod from
the US President, and Payne's fortune remained intact, or else increased!

References:
Ron Chernow, "The House of Morgan, An American Banking Dynasty
and the Rise of Modern Finance", New York, Atlantic Monthly
Press, 1990, 812 pp.
Ron Chernow, "Titan, the life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.",
New York, Random House, 1998, 774 pp.
Articles on James Buchanan Duke, Johnson Newlon Camden and Oliver
Hazard Payne in American National Biography